This guy started working on this blog post at age 15.

Hey marketers. Here’s a little something for your constant headache.

Businesses new to corporate blogging may think its a brilliant idea to leverage their staff for content. Great! You have an army of people with useful information. It takes the burden off of the marketing coordinator. You’ll just get in there and edit the draft and BOOM. Successful blog. Score one for the marketer.

Then, the sobering reality: you’ll spend more time chasing down staff for things they promised than you’ll spend actually editing & posting content.

Believe me, they’ll be enthralled to take part. It’s happened at every business ever. Especially for high-level members of the staff. They’ll be incredibly enthusiastic about the topic.

But writing takes time. And the deflation of creative enthusiasm happens in mere seconds if you don’t know where to start. That’s why your CTO will never get you his 10,000-word treatise on service-oriented architecture that you’d planned to spread over 20 posts. He’ll get bored, he’ll get busy, and he’ll never return to the page, no matter how much you nag.

May I suggest an alternative? Make use of an internal (or freelance…wink wink) writer to spend 15 minutes interviewing staff with brilliant ideas. Capture the content and let someone who is assuredly undaunted by the creative process take on the burden of its completion.

Relying on your staff for content is a gigantic headache. Do it more efficiently and you’ll have a steady flow of useful insights for your audience.